


Status Quo

by Alethia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Banter, Brotherly Bonding, Cleaning, Gen, Guns, Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-07
Updated: 2006-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethia/pseuds/Alethia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pistols done, Dean moved on to the shotguns, a little trickier, but he worked just as efficiently, bullets out—separated by type, rock salt here, regular there—action bar pulled back, barrel off, trigger pin, trigger mechanism, Jesus Christ, the firing pin group.</p>
<p>It was going to be an <i>endless</i> day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Status Quo

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the lovely guede_mazaka in commemoration of her birth. Originally posted on LJ [here](http://alethialia.livejournal.com/199104.html).

“Wake up.”

Sam’s eyes snapped open. “Wha—what? What’s wrong?” Dean was blurry, but he appeared to be…grinning?

“Nothing’s wrong. In fact, couldn’t be more right.” Definitely grinning and Sam was going to kill him. Just as soon as he came into focus.

He groaned for the time being. “Oh, God, why am I awake? I wasn’t even dreaming.”

“Because it’s gun day! And I need your bed.”

Sam grunted and buried his face in the pillow. He heard Dean sigh, irritated, and then something soft and fluffy hit him on the back of the head.

A pillow? He hit him with a _pillow_? Were they five?

“I mean it.”

It was Sam’s turn to sigh as he grabbed his pillow and the spread and kind of tipped onto the floor—

Which ended really badly, actually, because _ow_. The carpet approached the consistency of sandpaper and at least Sam had had the presence of mind to sleep in a shirt. But still. Pain.

He punched his pillow and pulled the spread over him…only to have it yanked away a moment later. Sam watched with one eye as it floated and then settled on his bed in some semblance of normalcy.

“At least you’re not being solicitous,” he grumbled, kind of rolling over and feeling the pull in his stomach. He leaned back on his hands.

Dean just grunted.

They could probably hold an entire conversation with nothing but grunts and groans and growls and would understand each other perfectly. He might want to start worrying about that, actually.

In the meantime, Sam let his silence speak for him.

It didn’t take Dean long. “What?”

“I was catching up on sleep, you know.”

“We both know that there’s no such thing. You can’t physically catch up on anything; what’s gone is gone, dude.”

“And where’d you hear this?” Sam scratched at his head, noticing Dean’s eyes flicking there. He tried to smush his hair down, but guessed from Dean’s smirk it wasn’t working very well.

“The Science Channel. Or was it the Learning Channel?” he mused. “One of those channels that talks about that stuff when we were somewhere with cable.” Dean started laying out cloths, covering his bed. 

Great. It was going to be one of _those_ days.

And Dean had been _watching_ him, with that look.

Dean set out cleaning supplies on Sam’s bed and moved over to the door to grab two duffels. Which clanked dimly as he moved them. He hauled them onto Sam’s bed and started taking out guns, already completely involved.

“Uh-huh.”

Dean frowned, looking down at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Dean field-stripped like he meant it, fingers working quickly as guns practically flew apart in his hands—magazines out, bullets ejected onto their own cloth, barrels and slides removed, set apart from the frame, everything clustered in its own little grouping.

And those were just the pistols.

“You went and bought cheesecloth?” Pistols done, Dean moved on to the shotguns, a little trickier, but he worked just as efficiently, bullets out—separated by type, rock salt here, regular there—action bar pulled back, barrel off, trigger pin, trigger mechanism, Jesus Christ, the firing pin group.

Really, really one of _those_ days.

“Uh-huh. Hey, did you know women use this stuff for cooking?” Action bar, carrier, and done, all grouped together. And he moved right on to the next one.

It was going to be an _endless_ day.

Sam rubbed his eyes. “Pretty sure some men cook with it, too.”

“The chick behind the counter asked me what I was making.”

Sam snorted. “Looking like that? I can’t imagine she thought you were the type for gourmet cuisine.” It’s not that Dean looked bad, just grungy, and wearing leather. Not exactly chef material.

“This is what I’m saying. Who looks and me and thinks, ‘oh, yeah, he’s making a soufflé tonight?’”

Sam managed a smile. “Technically, I don’t think you need cheesecloth to make a soufflé.”

“Example, college boy.”

Sam hmmed as he watched very large guns become smaller but ruthlessly organized groupings of gun parts.

“That’s what you told the cashier, isn’t it?”

Dean frowned at the shotgun. “Was wondering why she gave me such a weird look.”

Sam laughed and laughed, leaning further back on his hands, breath wheezing.

It actually made Dean pause, holding the action bar back but not moving to get to the barrel. “Dude. What’s the matter with you?”

Sam shook his head, grinning like a fool, he was sure. “That is so you. Cheesecloth to soufflé. Only you, man. Like that time you told that woman you were buying fertilizer for your hydrangeas.”

Dean continued on, jerking the barrel off with a little more force than was probably necessary. But it was an old gun. “How was I supposed to know she was some sort of amateur hydrangea freak?”

“The picture on her shirt wasn’t a big clue there?”

“I didn’t exactly know what a hydrangea looked like.”

Huh. He hadn’t known that. Dean had just cut him off any time he brought it up and they’d moved on, after. To the next job, the next town. “Then why’d you even say it?”

“ _The Manchurian Candidate_ was on the night before.”

Sam shook his head, blanking at that one. “Hello, non sequitur.”

“You know, there was that scene, where they’re being brainwashed, with the annoying woman going on about the stupid hydrangeas. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Sam flexed his face into something less incredulous as Dean glared at him. “It just really scares me how much you absorb from popular media.”

“It was a good movie! And it was what came to me. It’s not like I could have told her we were making our own bombs. Hydrangea was the next best thing.”

“Except for the part where it was the wrong fertilizer for hydrangeas.”

“And again, how was I supposed to know that? I mean, c’mon, what are the chances that I’d get trapped by the one freakin’ person in the place who’d know that? But it’s me, so of course I do and then I get _lectured_ and have to be rescued by Dad.”

Sam laughed at the memory, finally picking himself up off the floor, slowly, careful, shaking out his burning hands. Dean was already settling himself on Sam’s bed; there was no way he was getting out of this it seemed.

“Yeah, yeah, life’s unfair, I feel so bad for you.”

“You know, you are completely ungrateful considering how nice I am to you.”

Sam stared. “You kicked me out of bed when I was sound asleep. Totally worthy of flowers and candy. Hydrangeas, even.”

Dean finally got to the last gun, ejecting bullets easily and gathering up all the ammunition, moving it across the room. “This is the part where I remind you I’m not a girl, right?”

“Really? Huh.”

“Fine. I just won’t mention that I brought you a thingy from the place.” Dean gestured over by the door, vaguely. Sam grudgingly stumbled over, still rubbing his eyes, and the ‘thingy from the place’ turned out to be a breakfast sandwich from what he guessed was the diner they’d passed last night.

Sam could practically feel Dean tapping his foot in his head, like he was waiting for an unruly schoolchild to come to heel. Sam hated that.

He sighed, put upon. “Thank you for breakfast.” 

“Damn straight. Now hurry up and eat. You’re helping me do this.”

***

The food had woken him up a little, and he sank into the chair Dean had set on the other side of his bed, making sure to sit straight. Sam shouldn’t be this tired. He’d gone to sleep with the sun the night before and it was already eleven.

“So was there a special reason you decided to wake me up or were you just lonely?”

“Wanted to make sure you stayed with the land of the living. Even Carmen Electra doesn’t need that much beauty sleep. Not to mention, you’re not all that pretty.” Dean opened up their cleaning kit, pulling out brushes and patches, gun solvent and lubricant, arranging it all in a little row.

“I don’t know if I should be offended or thankful.” Or scared that Dean was so freaking anal.

“What can I say? I’m a walking contradiction.”

“That…makes no sense.”

Dean shook his head, like he was ridding the world of that statement, and moved on. “Yeah, whatever. My point is, when was the last time we did a down and dirty weapons cleaning? Not the pussy bore-swipe bullshit, I’m talking the full deal.” He looked at Sam accusingly, as if this were his fault. Or responsibility. Something.

“Um…”

“Exactly. What did Dad teach us about weapons maintenance?”

Sam nodded. He knew that one: “Once a month.”

“Once a month, that’s right. And we can’t even _remember_ the last time we did one? I’m thinkin’ that’s just tempting fate and with our luck, we don’t need to be doing any more tempting.” He didn’t look at Sam as he said that one, just picked up a brush and a patch and popped the top on the solvent.

“And you call me the control freak,” Sam grumbled, but he took his own brush and accepted the solvent from Dean without comment. The scent of it tickled his nose, an acrid bite, so achingly familiar from days with Dad, just like this.

Although, Dad did a lot more in the way of lecturing, come to think of it.

Dean ignored his shot. “You get pistols, I take shotguns, I figure, a couple hours and we’re good to go.” Shotguns being bigger and involving more work. Sam often wondered if Dean realized what he was doing or if it was an unconscious thing.

“Yeah, yeah. I couldn’t tell from your anal-retentive organization here. We’re not being obsessive or anything.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know. Also, how many fuck-ups have we had while cleaning weapons?”

“A couple.”

“More than a couple.” Dean flicked the rod at him in emphasis and a patch went flying, sailing all the way over the bed and landing on the carpet.

Sam raised an eyebrow; Dean had the grace to look sheepish, so Sam didn’t comment.

“A couple memorable ones,” he corrected. “There was that time I sliced my wrist open and Dad flipped out.”

Another solvent patch in place, Dean picked up the first barrel. “Dude, you practically cut it off.”

“It was a two-inch cut.” Sam followed suit, sighting down the barrel before he pushed the rod in.

“Yeah, but we couldn’t see that considering there was blood everywhere. Man, Dad almost killed me for that.”

“ _You_?” Dirty patches were already collecting in the trash. It was going to be a _long_ day.

Dean looked at him like it was obvious. “We shouldn’t have been horsing around near the weapons.”

“Yeah, and I’m the one who ran off and tripped over the chair—”

Dean smirked, shook his head. “‘Cause of your big, clown feet.”

“And practically fell on the knife. At least you caught me and pulled me away before I actually did seriously hurt myself. Dad should have been thanking you.”

“Yeah, but I should have known better. And look at what happened: you almost cut off your hand.” He gestured with the barrel, like his insanity actually made some kind of sense.

“It was a freakin’ two-inch cut.” Barrel done, Sam moved on to the frame and slide rails.

“And do you know what would have happened if you cut off your hand? Man, you wouldn’t have ever been able to jerk off properly and that’s just not natural.”

Sam blinked. “Guilt induced by virtue of my sex life. You know, you really don’t need to be thinking about that.”

Dean polished the barrel with a cloth, gone thoughtful. “Then again, I might not ever have had to walk in on you. Gotta say, if there was one thing I could do without, it’s knowing what my little bro’s come face looks like.”

Sam paused, then gestured at him with the toothbrush. “You just broke the guy code.”

Dean set the barrel down and frowned at the recoil spring in the buttstock. “Which guy code would that be?” he asked, distracted.

“The one where you never, ever mention it when you walk in on someone jerking off.”

Apparently sex was enough to get Dean’s attention. Yeah, Sam didn’t see that one coming. Dean finally focused back on him. “That’s a guy code?”

Sam shook his head and stopped scrubbing at the slide rails. “Hello?”

“Dude, not exactly like I had a ton of opportunity to walk in on—” A thought seemed to occur. “Hey, how many people have you walked in on?”

Sam shot a look. “Obviously that would be breaking the guy code.”

“Oh, see that, right there, that whole sex thing is the thing I really would have liked about college. Except, maybe not the whole walking in on guys thing…”

“Yeah, who cares about the education, learning, extracurriculars, job opportunities.” Sam reassembled the gun, pressing the slide catch lever and watching with satisfaction as the slide sprung forward immediately.

“That’s not why you go to college, dude. Well, not unless you’re you.”

Sam waved it all away and got back to the point. Because Dean could be distracting and he knew how to use it. “The moral is: not your fault when I screw up and also, never mention any knowledge of my sex life again.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.”

“Which one?” Sam pushed the magazine catch and checked that the magazine slid free.

“Take your pick.” Dean paused, looking around. “Okay, where is my Smith & Wesson?” He spread his hands, surveying all the guns.

Sam waved the gun in his hand—perfectly reassembled—with a ‘duh’ look on his face.

To which Dean rolled his eyes. “No, the .9.”

Sam catalogued all the guns, cocking his head. “Huh.”

“Aw, man. Don’t tell me it’s gone. I loved that gun. And it’s expensive.”

“You stole it off a cop.”

Dean got a ridiculously pleased look on his face; it had been one of his prouder moments. But he quickly got back on track. “I meant to replace. Dammit.” There was a definite whining tone to his voice.

Sam tried to be sympathetic, he really did. “When’s the last time you saw it?”

“Are you patronizing me?”

“Possibly, yes.”

“I thought so. Also, I don’t like you.” Dean tapped his fingers against his thighs, thinking.

“Now, Dean, don’t be like that.” So needling Dean amused him. Did that make it wrong?

Dean glared, but didn’t respond, obviously thinking back. “I had it on our last gig.”

“Dogman,” Sam supplied. Dean’s eyes tightened, but he nodded. He didn’t seem inclined to go on.

Fuck that.

“In the forest?” Sam prompted. 

“Yeah.”

“Did you drop it?”

“No, I had it when I brought you back to the—” He snapped his fingers. “I know where it is. I’ll be back.”

***

Dean was gone a lot longer than it took to go to the car and back. So much longer that Sam was considering calling his cell just to make sure he hadn’t gotten swallowed by mutant asphalt on his way out there.

It could happen.

So that _would_ be when the door would bang open.

“Well, look what we got here.” And—that jaunt sure had him all peppy.

“What?”

Dean held up a little—orange—knife. “I haven’t seen this in years.”

“It’s a pumpkin-carving knife.”

Dean shook his head once in that wow-you’re-an-idiot way he had. “Wow, Sammy. No wonder you were ace at that college shit.” He dropped the knife on his bed in front of Sam and pulled the missing Smith & Wesson from the small of his back. It was flaking mud and blood and definitely needed to be cleaned. Dean didn’t comment, just dismantled it quickly without really looking at it. Instead he smirked at the knife.

Sam blinked. “It’s a pumpkin-carving knife.” 

Dean settled himself on Sam’s bed, facing all the guns and Sam himself. “No, it’s _the_ pumpkin-carving knife,” he pointed out, punctuating it with a wave of the stock.

Sam pushed the bore brush in more sharply than he needed to. “Oh, you mean the pumpkin-carving knife with which you stole my childhood joy?”

Dean rolled his eyes, kept right on merrily cleaning the recoil spring. “I did not steal your freakin’ childhood joy.” He dropped the dirty patch into the trashcan between the beds.

Sam gestured with the barrel. “You did! Dad lets us indulge in one, count it, _one_ holiday activity and you go behind my back and take it away from me.”

“Yeah, Sam, that’s exactly what happened.” He moved back to the barrel, breaking out the steel wool and jewelers rouge, and started _polishing the chamber_ , moving the rod in and out.

The day just went from endless to _interminable_.

“It is! I had it all planned out, sketches and everything.”

Dean snorted. “Seriously. Even at twelve you were a nerd.” His wrist looked vulnerable like that, flicking the rod in a circular motion.

Sam ignored it and glared. “And what did you do?”

“I helped.”

“You _usurped_ my pumpkin.”

“Usurped. Okay, you get how silly that sounds, right?” He eyed Sam frankly before he turned his focus back to the gun, running his pinky along the inside of the chamber. The satisfied smile was easy to ignore.

“You usurped my pumpkin and ruined all my plans.”

“I made improvements to your design,” Dean corrected breezily, running a solvent patch through, followed by a lubricating patch, quick and deft like he’d done it a million times.

Not quite, but it felt like it.

Sam picked up the next pistol, doing the same swipe, brush, lube job Dean had, forgoing the polishing because good God, that’d take all day. “First you stole all the seeds—ensuring we couldn’t toast them, by the way—and then you cut my pumpkin’s head off. How is that improving anything?”

“First of all, a pumpkin is only a head, so it’s not like I cut its head off. I cut the top of its head off and added a few cosmetic details.”

“You had its pumpkin brains trailing out and over the floor.”

Dean actually _smiled_. “I thought it fit given the holiday.” He clicked the shotgun barrel back into place, righting the action bar and moving straight into a function check, easy as anything.

“Stole my joy, Dean.”

“Oh, you’re fine. And the neighbors totally got a kick out of it.”

“Like when they wanted to talk to Dad about our latent psychological issues?”

“Somehow, I don’t think old Mr. Reynolds next door was using words like ‘latent psychological issues,’” Dean pointed out helpfully, picking up the next shotgun barrel.

Sam jammed his toothbrush into the slide rail, giving ‘thorough’ new meaning.

Dean tsked at him. “Hey, easy there. Have a little respect, would you?”

Sam was annoyed and his hands were shaking. Time for a scenery change, then. “Okay, I’m starting to get high from these fumes.”

“Good. You could use some loosening up.”

Sam shook his head, blinked. Things were a little wobbly. “I’m not kidding.”

“Sadly, neither am I.”

Sam set everything down and glared at him. “Dean.”

Dean sighed, following suit and setting the stock and toothbrush down. “All right, break for lunch.”

It took Sam significantly longer to get dressed than he would have liked and he had to slam the bathroom door on Dean when he started making his guilty-here-let-me-help-you face. 

At least Dean hadn’t actually said anything. He got not to break that guy code, it seemed.

The diner wasn’t far but Sam was still tired and if he let Dean help him get out of the Impala, at least Dean didn’t say anything about that, either.

It was the typical roadside diner and the waitress behind the counter recognized Dean, mother-henning all over the two of them. Sam smiled, forced, and didn’t say anything as Dean did his best ‘aw, shucks’ routine, nabbing them a couple bowls of free soup.

Dean attacked his food like Dad had had them doing full-gear hill sprints all day—fun times had by all—instead of basically sitting on his ass.

Did guilt-tripping burn a lot of calories? He’d raise it as a discussion topic, but Sam had a pretty clear idea of Dean’s response and, well, no fun there. Also, he was still tired and sore and he still couldn’t really lean forward so he had to bring the bowl and spoon to him and it was all really started to piss him off.

Which would be exactly when a balled-up napkin hit him in the forehead, plopping right in the center of his bowl of soup. Great.

“Tell me you weren’t using that before you reverted to a five-year-old and decided to throw it at me.”

“Nah, grabbed it from the dispenser,” he nodded to the tissue-paper-like napkins in the dispenser on their table. “You don’t have to worry about any nasty Dean germs making their way into your food.” Sam had totally missed him grabbing that napkin and crumpling it into something throw-worthy. That was unlike him.

Must have been pretty well gone, then. Huh.

“Was there a reason or did you just think the addition would improve the taste?” Sam picked out the napkin—it hadn’t even absorbed much of the soup, this was how effective these things were—and tossed it onto the cracked plastic of their table.

“Stop thinking.”

“That’s pretty much impossible.”

“Fine, stop wallowing.”

“I am not—”

“You so are.”

Sam would have snapped back, but Linda—they were all on a first-name basis, of course—chose that time to bring their sandwiches, so Dean switched on the charm and kept her there way longer than was necessary and by the time she left, it had lost its urgency.

“You know, this is good deal we got here. Grab a little food, a little downtime, just a couple of guys polishing their guns.”

Sam waited a beat.

“Okay, I can _hear_ you thinking right now. Pervert.”

Sam smiled a little, fiddling with a french-fry. “Hey, you went there, not me.”

Dean flicked a pickle at him and Sam was aware enough to avoid getting hit this time around. “You were in your mind.”

“Someone else getting psychic powers now?”

Dean rolled his eyes exaggeratedly as he quickly chewed on his double-decker burger, like a placeholder until he could actually talk.

That being after he swallowed: “Whatever. Obviously I meant that in the completely nonsexual sense.”

“Since you weren’t the one just spending quality time on the thought of me jerking off.”

Dean screwed up his face like he’d tasted something nasty. “Ugh. It wasn’t like that and you know it.”

“Subtext, man. It’s what you learn at those fancy schools. You know, when you’re not walking in on people jerking off.” Sam smirked as he took a bite; the turkey club wasn’t even half-bad.

Dean snapped his fingers and leaned forward, an insane grin on his face. “I knew it! You are so holding out on the college boy exploits.”

“I’ll never tell.”

“All right, all right. Be like that. Just see if I ever tell you any of mine ever again.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

Sam dodged the french-fry, too. 

They settled into a comfortable silence, Sam losing his appetite a few bites into his sandwich, Dean pretending he didn’t notice.

They were a pair, the two of them.

The little lines in between Dean’s eyebrows appeared then and _of course_. It’s not like they could go five minutes without this. Dean wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

“I didn’t really steal your childhood joy, did I?” Sam so saw that one coming.

Sam shrugged, dropping all pretense and pushing his plate forward. “You thought you were being funny.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t—I was older, I should have known—” Dean gestured vaguely with the ketchup. 

Sam looked down and shrugged, “Yeah, it sucked, but you can’t know everything.”

“World’s worst brother over here, right?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “No, you just see things differently than I do.”

“Right. Don’t mess with Sammy’s pumpkin, got it.”

Sam smiled. “Besides, it was partly Dad anyway, keeping us under lock and key like that.”

“Sammy…”

“No matter what good he thought he was doing for us.” Sam shook his head.

Dean made a face and dropped his half-eaten burger. Great. “Dad didn’t let you get roughed up out there,” he said, voice gone tight, avoiding Sam’s eyes.

“No one can _let me_ do anything. And it’s not. your. fault.”

Dean shrugged. “Sure.”

“Hey. Hey,” Sam said, waiting for Dean to look at him.

He finally did, weight in his eyes that hardly ever went away these days. And it felt like Sam’s fault, even if he knew it wasn’t, and all he wanted was to just not have to do this. But that didn’t seem likely. “I’m fine.”

Dean shook his head, once, smile more a grimace than anything. He sucked in a breath…and it was gone, blinked out, like _that_.

“ _Yeah_ you are.”

It was always the question with Dean: should he let him? Let him push it away, make it a joke, keep his distance. Sam could push, he could press…but really, what good would it serve?

“You know it.”

Better to choose the status quo this time. He hoped.

***

Fin. Feedback is adored.


End file.
